Disclosure Document No. 241578 dated Dec. 18, 1989, pertains to the subject matter hereof and is incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to an improved disposable cat litter box.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The conventional cat litter box, purchasable in a pet shop or supermarket, comprises a plastic tray (measuring approximately 16" long by 12" wide and 5" deep) of durable construction intended for long term use and which may or may not be provided with a dome-like cover. Conventional practice is for the cat owner to purchase a bag of cat litter material the weight and bulkiness of which in one's shopping bag one must take into consideration if simultaneously making other purchases, especially if not traveling by car. At home, the cat owner pours some (or all, depending on bag size purchased) of the litter material into the plastic litter box and shakes same to evenly distribute it therein (to a minimum useful depth of about one inch); the remainder, if any, being kept stored for future use.
Accordingly, conventional litter boxes must be prepared for use and, after each period of use, must be emptied, preferably cleaned and necessarily refilled. It is a notoriously unpleasant task, to such degree that it is not uncommon for members of the household, particularly the younger ones, to dispute whose turn it is to clean the litter box.
First, of course, as already described, the tray must be prepared for use by pouring litter material into it. Unless a dust-suppressing brand of litter material is used (costing up to twice as much as the cheapest form of the product), a suffocating dust rises when the litter material is poured into the tray. The dust must be suffered a second time when the tray is emptied, at which time it is especially offensive because it then reeks of the cat waste it has absorbed; justifying, for those who can afford its running cost, the substantially higher price of litter material containing a dust-suppressing additive.
Volunteers to empty the litter box are frequently difficult to obtain because it seldom dumps entirely clean--damp clumps of the used litter material will stubbornly stick to the bottom or sides of the tray and can be removed only by use of a scraping tool to force the smelly stuff out. And sometimes the cat will have missed the litter material altogether and deposited feces directly on the sides of the tray or on an area of the bottom from which the cat has dug away the litter material in the course of characteristically preparing a hole for depositing its waste, necessitating an especially unpleasant scraping job and, later, cleaning the scraping tool.
Finally, no matter how thoroughly the assignee scrapes the tray, a foul odor will cling to it which can be removed only by washing the tray with a disinfectant; a task which, due to its nature, one is unhappy to have to do in the kitchen or bathroom sink or tub, or without wearing rubber gloves, or using other than a discardable rag or brush set aside exclusively for that purpose.
Liners are available like those used for lining garbage receptacles except proportioned to fit a litter box, but such liners are themselves severely limited and introduce other problems. As the cat digs the litter material and moves it about in the tray, portions of the liner tend to rise above the surface of the litter material. The result is that the cat winds up depositing urine or feces on the liner where it cannot be dried and thereby deodorized by the litter material and one must suffer its smell and the cat dirtied by its own waste. Moreover, as the cat digs the litter material in an effort to make a hole for depositing its waste, the liner is clawed, producing holes and rips some of which will make their presence known only when the liner is lifted for discard, at which time dried lumps of feces per se as well as feces clumped together with litter material will fall onto the floor, imposing a cleanup chore in addition to cleaning the litter box. Further, liners for cat litter boxes do not have the tall shape that characterizes those used to line trash receptacles but instead reflect the flat proportions of the tray. The shallow proportions of a litter box liner makes it difficult to fully collect its edges when lifting the liner from the tray--there is a tendency for the liner's edges to suddenly and expectedly fall away at one or more points (due to the inherently heavy weight of clay litter material), again causing spillage of material which, by its very nature, is unpleasant to sweep up, especially with a broom one uses generally.
It has previously been proposed to avoid all the limitations described above through use of a disposable cat litter box, made of waterproof cardboard initially folded into an relatively flat box prepackaged with litter material, which, when opened by the purchaser unfolds to form a litter box, and which, after its period of use, is discardable in entirety together with its added contents. A number of specifically different constructions have previously been proposed, most pertinent of which appear to be those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,014,292, 4,548,160, 4,628,863, 4,782,788, 4,788,935 and 4,846,103. But these, and other prior proposals, are limited in one or more respects. In some instances the box is folded in a rather complicated way which appears to add unnecessarily to manufacturing cost and is not instantly usable after opening the box because requiring refolding of panels in a certain way (e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,548,160 and 4,628,863). Others introduce inconvenience to the extent of requiring erecting the panels and then drawing a plastic bag over them (which the cat may tear) to form an enclosed litter box (e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,788,935 and 4,846,103). Some provide the litter material contained in a plastic bag which must then be emptied into the box (e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,014,292 and 4,788,935), or require reliance on accessory devices, such as, for example, the brace needed to hold the panels fully open as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,014,292. Finally, no prior art is known to provide a disposable litter box wherein, when unfolded, the longer side panels lean outwardly beyond the width of the box's bottom so that, during its period of use, adequate room is provided for the cat to move about within the box, but, in folded configuration as when on a store's shelf or during storage, the box has more compact proportions.
Gift boxes are commonly available which comprise similar upper and lower parts, one of which parts forms a cover for the other, and both of which parts are commonly sold in initially flattened condition for opening by the purchaser to form an open-top box and a similar box that is turned upside down to form a cover that slidably engages the lower box. Either of such boxes provides a rectangular bottom panel (which may be elongated) bordered by foldable side and end panels which are initially provided folded overlying the bottom panel. Adjacent side and end panels form an open-top box having closed corners and the end panels are folded along lateral fold lines which are contiguous with diagonal fold lines formed in the adjacent side panels, which diagonal fold lines are thereby given a certain fold bias. But, the side panels are folded first, and the end panels are folded overlying the side panels, which attains a result that is the opposite of that attained by the invention disposable litter box. In the case of the gift boxes, the fold bias of the diagonal fold lines is such that when the side panels are pulled to open position they lean inwardly. This is useful for a gift box which comprises two parts because it maximizes friction therebetween when the cover part is fully closed upon the bottom part, but is not useful for a litter box that comprises only one part because the inward lean of the side panels (i) excessively reduces the space allotted for the cat to move about within the box, and (ii) results in the cat making deposits on the outboard surfaces of the side panels.
A similar limitation characterizes the disposable litter box disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,014,292, which most nearly approaches the construction disclosed herein, but which depends upon the use of "J-shaped channels . . . " to embrace the top edge of each side wall" for the purpose of preventing the otherwise inward lean of the side walls toward each other.
No more pertinent prior art is presently known.